Entangled Secrets. Pat Esden
faery sight, a guy that Athena and her friends had hung out with. Gar could make only an educated guess who she’d had sex with and when. But faery sight was a rare, practically unique gift.
“Well,” Gar finally said, “this is an interesting complication.”
She nodded. “And terrifying.”
“I assume Peregrine’s father doesn’t know?”
She nodded again. “I tried to tell him.”
“You know I’ll respect your right to privacy,” Gar said. “But I’d want to be told.”
They fell silent as they came out the other end of the passageway and onto a side street.
Devlin motioned them into a huddle. “It would be smart to get off the streets for at least a few minutes, avoid any chance of running into the police.” He slanted a look at a nearby Tibetan restaurant. “Anyone want lunch?”
“Good idea,” Lionel said.
Chandler noticed Devlin and Gar glance sharply at Lionel, as if to question when he’d become a voting member of the group. But if either of them had objected, she would have demanded he be included. Like it or not, they’d passed the point where hiding everything from Lionel made sense. He’d seen the same creature they had and seen it before them. Besides, he’d risked his life to protect her and Peregrine from the dog.
As they settled in around a table at the back of the room, Peregrine poked her in the arm.
“Now do you believe me about the redcap?” he said.
Devlin’s gaze winged to her. “What?”
Chandler frowned at Peregrine. It would have been nice if he could have kept that to himself until the two of them were alone. “Didn’t we already decide that was Henry dragging around one of Brooklyn’s scarecrows?”
“I told you that wasn’t what I saw,” Peregrine insisted.
“You also said it was as big as a rhinoceros.”
He folded his arms across his chest, slumped in his chair, and kicked his sneakered feet against its legs.
As a waiter sauntered up to the table to take their orders, Chandler pointed at something on the menu. She really didn’t care what she ate. Mostly she wanted a cold drink. Iced tea. Lemonade. A tall glass of something cool, at home in her living room, alone with Peregrine where she could give him a good talking-to in private.
Once the waiter left, Devlin fixed his gaze on Lionel. “Are we right in assuming you’ve never had any supernatural experiences besides seeing this dog?”
“Never. And I—I’ve only seen the dog twice. This time and when I mistakenly thought I saw The Thinker shift into a loup-garou.” He scrubbed a hand over his uneven hair. “I told you the truth yesterday. All my life, I believed magic was real. That’s why I borrowed the invitation to the coven’s party. My goal wasn’t to hurt anyone.”
“But if you’d found proof you would have exposed the Circle to the world by writing an article?” Gar asked.
“Um—I don’t know. I might not have.” A pained expression furrowed Lionel’s forehead. He closed his eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like to never have people believe you. You don’t know how good it felt when I met the goth and he told me about the Circle. Suddenly, someone believed me. I wasn’t alone. It was the same today when Peregrine and the rest of you saw the dog.”
Devlin leaned back in his chair. He rested his hands on the tabletop. “So, you never saw any weird or unexplainable creatures until very recently?”
Lionel closed his eyes, carefully summoning the right words. “I suppose I did see things, when I was half asleep. Out of the corner of my eye. But, no, not fully formed creatures in broad daylight.”
Chandler’s thoughts went back to when she’d shook Lionel’s hand. She’d sensed a creative fire in him, like that of an artist. It wasn’t unusual for highly creative people to construct ghosts out of moonlight or imagine faery faces in the wrinkled bark of trees. He was right, too: creative imagination was not the same as seeing through glamour.
Lionel nudged his glasses up higher on his nose and stared steadily over the lenses at Devlin. “Where are you going with this?”
“It doesn’t make any sense for an adult person who lacks any supernatural ability to suddenly develop one.” Devlin didn’t say it aloud, but Chandler knew by “adult person” he was referring to non-witches.
Lionel leaned forward. “What if a spell messed with someone’s brain? Could that give them the sight? Um—like the spell your high priestess”—he corrected himself—“like Rhianna performed on me when she was impersonating your sister.” He turned to Chandler and smiled warmly. “Yesterday, I believed you when you told me the truth and then claimed it was a lie to demonstrate my naivete. At least, I believed you for a few minutes. I—I don’t blame you for trying to protect the coven.”
She let herself look deeper into his eyes and saw nothing but kindness and honesty. There had to be a way to at least begin to resolve this stalemate, a way through this maze of Lionel’s astute guesses and their uncomfortable but necessary lies.
Peregrine nudged her foot with his. “Mom?”
“What?” she said sharply, followed by a warning side-eye.
He shoved his hands into his pants pockets and looked down as if rethinking before getting in trouble again. “I was just thinkin’ about what Gar said last night—about laws and people being responsible for things even if they didn’t do them.”
“I was talking about a different situation,” Gar said quickly.
Peregrine crumpled deeper in his chair. “Yeah, I guess.”
A lump formed in Chandler’s throat. She swept her hand over her head, feeling the soft bristle of her hair. Peregrine was onto something. Along with covering up threats to the witching world’s anonymity, covens were responsible for policing illegal magic. There was nothing legal about the spell Rhianna had used on Lionel. Plus, just because they weren’t aware of a spell that could cause a non-witch to have abilities, it didn’t mean one didn’t exist. In this case, it was the only logical answer for Lionel having the sight. He didn’t have it before the spell affected his mind, but he did afterward.
Chandler rested her elbows on the table. Then she steepled her fingers and looked from Devlin to Gar and lastly to Lionel. She was the Circle’s high priestess now, and she knew in her heart the first step Athena would have taken toward resolving the situation. There was only one right choice, morally and by High Council law.
She lowered her voice and mustered an Athena-like tone. “It seems clear to me that the spell performed on Lionel affected his thought processes and somehow gave him the sight. As the current acting high priestess of the Circle, I feel we are obligated to find a way to reverse the damage done by someone illegally presenting themselves as a member of our coven.”
“I told you—” Peregrine started to say.
Chandler put a hand on his arm. “Quiet.”
“I tend to agree that helping Lionel is only fair,” Devlin said. “But we need to have a way to ensure his future silence.”
“Um”—Lionel blinked uneasily—“I don’t blame you, if you don’t trust me after what I did. But if you can straighten out my head, I promise I won’t ever tell anyone or write about the coven or heritage witches.”
“You’ll also need to sever all contact with our world,” Gar said. “And simply giving your word won’t be good enough.”
Chandler wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. The type of pledges the High Council required came with major risks attached for violations—like deadly consequences.
Devlin shot a hard look at Gar. “As high priest of the